Solution Manual for E Commerce 2017 13th Edition

by Laudon Traver ISBN 0134601564 9780134601564

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Instructor’s Manual: Chapter 4
Building an E-commerce Presence: Websites, Mobile Sites, and Apps

Learning Objectives
● Understand the questions you must ask and answer, and the steps you should take,
in developing an e-commerce presence.
● Explain the process that should be followed in building an e-commerce presence.
● Identify and understand the major considerations in choosing web server and e-
commerce merchant server software.
● Understand the issues involved in choosing the most appropriate hardware for an
e-commerce site.
● Identify additional tools that can improve website performance.
● Understand the important considerations involved in developing a mobile website
and building mobile applications.

Key Terms
SWOT analysis, p. 193
systems development life cycle (SDLC), p. 198
business objectives, p. 199
system functionalities, p. 199
information requirements, p. 199
system design specification, p. 199
logical design, p. 200
physical design, p. 200
outsourcing, p. 202
WordPress, p. 202
content management system (CMS), p. 202
co-location, p. 204
unit testing, p. 208
system testing, p. 208
acceptance testing, p. 208
A/B testing (split testing), p. 208
multivariate testing, p. 208
benchmarking, p. 209
system architecture, p. 210
two-tier architecture, p. 211
multi-tier architecture, p. 212

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site management tools, p. 212

dynamic page generation, p. 214
web application server, p. 216
e-commerce merchant server software, p. 217
online catalog, p. 217
shopping cart, p. 217
merchant server software package (e-commerce software platform), p. 217
open source software, p. 218
hardware platform, p. 220
stateless, p. 221
I/O intensive, p. 222
scalability, p. 222
vertical scaling, p. 222
horizontal scaling, p. 222
Common Gateway Interface (CGI), p. 227
Active Server Pages (ASP), p. 228
ASP.NET, p. 228
Java, p. 228
Java Server Pages (JSP), p. 229
JavaScript, p. 229
ActiveX, p. 229
VBScript, p. 229
ColdFusion, p. 230
PHP, p. 230
Ruby on Rails (RoR/Rails), p. 230
Django, p. 231
widget, p. 231
privacy policy, p. 232
accessibility rules, p. 232
mobile website, p. 232
mobile web app, p. 235
native app, p. 235
hybrid app, p. 235
mobile first design, p. 237
responsive web design (RWD), p. 237
adaptive web design (AWD), p. 238

Brief Chapter Outline

The Wall Street Journal: Redesigning for the Future
4.1 Imagine Your E-commerce Presence
What’s the Idea (The Visioning Process)
Where’s the Money: Business and Revenue Model
Who and Where Is the Target Audience?
What Is the Ballpark? Characterize the Marketplace

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

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Where’s the Content Coming From?

Know Yourself: Conduct a SWOT Analysis
Develop an E-commerce Presence Map
Develop a Timeline: Milestones
How Much Will This Cost?

4.2 Building an E-commerce Presence: A Systematic Approach

Planning: The Systems Development Life Cycle
Systems Analysis/Planning: Identify Business Objectives, Systems Functionality,
and Information Requirements
Systems Design: Hardware and Software Platforms
Building the Systems: In-House versus Outsourcing
Insight on Business: Weebly Makes Creating Websites Easy
Testing the System
Implementation and Maintenance
Factors in Optimizing Website Performance

4.3 Choosing Software

Simple versus Multi-tiered Website Architecture
Web Server Software
Application Servers
E-commerce Merchant Server Software Functionality
Merchant Server Software Packages (E-commerce Software Platforms)

4.4 Choosing Hardware

Right-Sizing Your Hardware Platform: The Demand Side
Right-Sizing Your Hardware Platform: The Supply Side

4.5 Other E-commerce Site Tools

Website Design: Basic Business Considerations
Tools for Search Engine Optimization
Tools for Interactivity and Active Content
Personalization Tools
The Information Policy Set
Insight on Society: Designing for Accessibility

4.6 Developing a Mobile Site and Building Mobile Applications

Planning and Building a Mobile Presence
Mobile Presence: Design Considerations
Cross-Platform Mobile App Development Tools
Mobile Presence: Performance and Cost Considerations
Insight on Technology: Carnival Cruise Ships Go Mobile

4.7 Case Study: Dick’s Sporting Goods: Taking Control of its E-commerce Operations

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

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4.8 Review
Key Concepts
Questions
Projects
References

Figures
Figure 4.1 SWOT Analysis, p. 193
Figure 4.2 E-commerce Presence Map, p. 194
Figure 4.3 Components of a Website Budget, p. 196
Figure 4.4 Factors to Consider in Developing an E-commerce Presence, p. 198
Figure 4.5 Website Systems Development Life Cycle, p. 199
Figure 4.6 A Logical and Physical Design for a Simple Website, p. 201
Figure 4.7 Choices in Building and Hosting, p. 202
Figure 4.8 The Spectrum of Tools for Building Your Own E-commerce Site, p. 203
Figure 4.9 Costs of Customizing E-commerce Software Packages, p. 204
Figure 4.10 Factors in Website Optimization, p. 210
Figure 4.11 Two-tier and Multi-tier E-commerce Architectures, p. 211
Figure 4.12 Webtrends Analytics, p. 214
Figure 4.13 Degradation in Performance as Number of Users Increases, p. 223

Tables
Table 4.1 E-commerce Presence Timeline, p. 195
Table 4.2 System Analysis: Business Objectives, System Functionality, and Information
Requirements for a Typical E-commerce Site, p. 200
Table 4.3 Key Players: Hosting/Co-Location/Cloud Services, p. 207
Table 4.4 Basic Functionality Provided by Web Servers, p. 213
Table 4.5 Application Servers and Their Function, p. 216
Table 4.6 Open Source Software Options, p. 219
Table 4.7 Factors in Right-Sizing an E-commerce Platform, p. 221
Table 4.8 Vertical and Horizontal Scaling Techniques, p. 222
Table 4.9 Improving the Processing Architecture of Your Site, p. 224
Table 4.10 E-commerce Website Features That Annoy Customers, p. 225
Table 4.11 The Eight Most Important Factors in Successful E-commerce Site Design,
p. 226
Table 4.12 Systems Analysis for Building a Mobile Presence, p. 236
Table 4.13 Unique Features That Must Be Taken into Account When Designing a Mobile
Presence, p. 237

Teaching Suggestions
This chapter walks students through the general process of building an e-commerce
presence. It lays out a methodology for approaching the problem. It also considers the
major issues in building an e-commerce presence and identifies some of the tools

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

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available that can help entrepreneurs and business managers. The chapter is based on the
real-world experiences of the authors.

The key point for students to take away from this chapter is that building an e-commerce
presence is a complex undertaking akin to building an entirely new information system.
Major physical and human resources are required, and many firms find it cost-effective to
outsource a part or all of the effort to specialized firms. On the other hand, building an e-
commerce presence has never been easier or cheaper. In general, the cost of building an
e-commerce presence in 2016 is one-tenth the cost in the year 2000. This should be
encouraging to any budding entrepreneurs in your class.

The opening case, The Wall Street Journal: Redesigning for the Future, examines some
of the factors involved in the redesign of the Wall Street Journal’s website and mobile
apps. Here are some questions you can pose to the class to spark discussion about the
case:
● What were WSJ’s objectives in redesigning its e-commerce presence?
● What considerations, if any, unique to the newspaper business were involved?
● What did WSJ do to meet the needs of mobile device users?

Key Points
Imagining Your E-commerce Presence. The first section of the chapter (pages 190 to 197)
walks the student through the process of creating an e-commerce presence, by developing
an idea, understanding how the idea can potentially make money, defining the target
audience and the marketplace and determining what the content looks like. An important
part of this effort involves performing a SWOT analysis, developing a presence map, and
creating a timeline.

A Method for Building E-commerce Sites. In the early years of e-commerce, websites
were often built one page at a time, with little advance planning. Many disasters resulted.
Section 4.2 of the text borrows the systems analysis and design framework from large-
scale systems and applies it to building an e-commerce website (which in reality is a
large-scale system). Table 4.2 helps you walk students through business objectives, the
level of system functionality needed, and information requirements. This plants the idea
that systems, information, and business objectives are intimately connected.

This is also a good time to introduce the issue of outsourcing options and tool options.
Figure 4.4 covers most of the outsourcing options, and Figure 4.5 illustrates the range of
tool options. The Insight on Business case, Weebly Makes Creating Websites Easy,
highlights Weebly, a company that was itself once a small start-up, and whose business
model focuses on enabling small businesses to create websites easily and inexpensively.
Some discussion questions for this case might include the following:
● What value does Weebly offer to small businesses?
● Are there any drawbacks to using Weebly to create an e-commerce presence?
● How are service providers like Weebly changing the nature of e-commerce?

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc.

Another document from Scribd.com that is
random and unrelated content:
before, muttering, "Dead, dead!" He was absent from the midday meal;
but arrived before supper time, still in a daze. An angry stepfather read
him a note from the principal, reporting the truancy, and took him out to
the woodshed.
"I've had enough of this!" said the man, as he doubled a clothes line.
"You were not home to supper last night; but I said nothing at breakfast,
because I wanted to think it out. I'm going to give you what you need.
Your mother spoiled you, and I always knew it."
He struck the impassive boy round the legs. Partly from this, partly from
the mention of his mother, the tears welled into his eyes, and, the barriers
removed, the uprush overwhelmed him. Down on his face in the ash
heap he fell, sobbing convulsively, while the unrestrained tears streamed
through his fingers.
"Dead!" he said in a choked voice. "Dead, dead! Oh, father, she's dead!
She's dead!"
The abashed stepfather stayed his hand. "I can't very well whip you, boy,
if you feel like this," he said kindly. "I never thought you cared for your
mother. You didn't take on like this when she died, nor for your sister.
Come into the house when you're through crying. I don't like to hear
you." The man went in, troubled in mind at having misjudged the boy.
The boy sobbed his aching heart dry on the ashes, then lifted his face,
drawn, tear stained, and old—very old, for a boy. "Zenie!" he called
softly. "Zenie, Zenie!" The voice rose to a wail. "Come back! Zenie,
come back! Come back! Oh, God, send her back! Please send her back!
Zenie, come back!" It ended in a cry of utter despair.
Then, close beside him, so close that it seemed almost within his ear, he
heard a voice, clear and distinct, yet without sound or volume, say, "Yes,
I will come."
He stood up and looked around. No one was there. He went out of the
shed; but the back yard was empty. He went back to the ash heap,
marveling to the extent that his benumbed faculties would permit; and as
he sat there, a peace, a tranquillity, and a content that he had known only
in her presence, came to him, and the dragging pain at his heart passed
away.
Peace, tranquillity, and content are poor attributes with which to fight the
battle of life. Being a boy, he soon worked clear of the shadow of death;
but, without the helpful influences of his life he relapsed into the old
shyness and indifference. Deprived of all that he had loved, he found
nothing new to love; and, thus unreceptive, he ceased to respond to it
when given and became unlovable. He lost ground in study, became
sullen, suspicious, and at last incorrigible. When he had worn out his
teachers' and his stepfather's patience, he left school ungraduated, with a
scant knowledge of the lower studies to his credit. He went to work at
driving a delivery wagon, and failed. Again and again he obtained work
of this character, but could not hold his place.
Then his stepfather, after repeated advice and punishments, gave him up,
furnished him with a suit of clothes and a sum of money, and turned him
out. He sold papers for a time; but lost his money in this venture. He
blacked boots at the few hotels of the small town, until this too proved a
failure. He went off with a circus, and learned of real hardship and ill
treatment; which embittered him the more. He drifted to New York, a
newly fledged hobo, found the Bowery and its adjuncts, and, seventeen
now, and grown nearly to full stature, he was in due time shanghaied
aboard an outbound deep-water ship. At the end of the voyage he had
learned to steer, to loose and furl a royal, and to get out of the way,
which is all that is required of an ordinary seaman, and thus equipped the
crimps saw to it that he signed again. Lacking in ambition and initiative,
he remained at sea, and, compelled to learn, went through the grades of
ordinary and able seaman, becoming in five years a competent boatswain
of square-rigged ships.
Physically he developed into a man of iron, tall, straight, and
symmetrical, brown as a Moor, and with his sullen stare changed to a
meaningless frown. Mentally, except for the growth of a splendid
professional courage, he remained at a standstill. He did not go
backward. He read an occasional book, and the correctness of diction he
had acquired at school remained with him, unspoiled by the associations
of the forecastle. But he was a drifter, an ethical bankrupt, signing in
ships picked by the boarding masters, robbed by them of his money,
lending it when asked, or spending it with hopeless indifference, as
resigned to the life he lived as any fatalist, and unable to realize that
there might be a better within his reach; until, starved into a mental
activity by a long passage on short rations, he moved himself sufficiently
to secure a berth in one of the Atlantic liners, where good food was
plentiful. Here his acquirements were of little use to him—he scrubbed
paint by day and decks by night. But he came in contact with passengers.
Engaged with bucket and swab on a section of the after saloon one day,
in the dull, apathetic frame of mind that was now natural with him, he
noticed the approach of two passengers, a bewhiskered, peppery looking
man of middle age, and an elderly woman with an unusually kind and
sympathetic face.
"Look there!" said the man, in tones that Bridge could hear. "See what
seamanship amounts to in these floating blast furnaces! That fellow's a
sailor, if I know one, from his head to his heels. But they've made him a
scrubwoman."
"I should think he would try to do better," answered the old lady, after a
searching look at Bridge's expressionless face. "Notice his bearing. He is
Othello, off the stage. There are unlimited possibilities in such a nature."
They halted near the rail for a further inspection of him. Bridge,
swabbing industriously, pretended not to hear. He had not attracted so
much attention for years.
"See the slumbering fire in those dark eyes," went on the innocent old
lady—"the reserve power, the strength to do, and dare, and die—the
tremendous will of a strong man, who lets nothing baffle him when
aroused. That man has not been aroused. See his hair—"
"Nonsense! A stiff drink'll arouse him."
"There you are again, skeptic," laughed the old lady. "But, I tell you,
eyes and hair indicate character! His hair is the very opposite of Zaza's,
but equally rare and matchless in hue. Each indicates temperament."
They went on, and Bridge dropped his swab and watched them till they
were out of sight. He had never seen them, to his knowledge, and their
comment on himself and his work had not greatly disturbed him. But the
name Zaza, the name of someone they knew, had seemed familiar. It had
brought the same thrill of recognition that he had experienced years
before at school, when the little girl was called up to sing—the little girl
that died, and whom he had almost forgotten.
"Zaza, Zaza," he repeated to himself. It was a strange name. Where had
he heard it?
It was his lookout at the bow that night from eight to ten, and he took his
place clad in sou'wester and oilskins; for a fog thick as darkness had
settled down on the ship. He could see the stem in front of him, but little
farther in the smudge. Aft was the dim outline of the windlass, and
beyond the dimmer outline of the V-shaped breakwater. To starboard and
port were the two mighty anchors, magnified by the fog. Eyes were of
little use on such a night; but he dutifully kept his ears open for sound of
foghorn or steam whistle, and paced up and down, thinking of matters
unthought of for years—his old home and school days, his mother and
sister, and little golden-haired Zenie who had died. Step by step he
reviewed his life of failure and incompetence. Voyage after voyage,
event after event, men and influences—all came under the criticism of
his aroused faculties, until they ended with the comment of the old lady
on the after deck. "That man has not been aroused," she had said. Where
was the reserve power, the strength, the will to do, that she had seen in
him?
The review went backward, man after man, happening after happening,
to the meeting with his stepfather at the ash pile, and back of this to the
boy in the street, who had told him a casual piece of news and asked him
to the ball ground. Here was where it went out of him—the courage to
do, and strive, and work, and win. He now realized that it was not the
passing away of his mother and his sweet little sister, nor the mis-
judgment of his stepfather and the ill treatment of men, that had
unnerved him; it was the losing of Zenie, who had never looked at him
but once, but whose presence on earth had made him a strong, victorious
boy and a good scholar. And the heart hunger and pain that had left him
at the ash pile came to him again.
"Zenie!" he called almost inaudibly into the fog. "Zenie, come back!
Come back to me!"
A patter of footsteps on the wet deck aroused him, and he looked around.
A small cloaked figure had just clambered over the breakwater, and it ran
up to him, peering into his face with wide-open, wondering eyes. And
they were the eyes of Zenie, set in the same clean-cut little face fringed
with the same golden-hued tresses.
"Did you call me, sir?" she asked. "Oh, I beg pardon. I thought I knew
you, and that you called me. I don't know—" she stepped back. "My
name is Zaza Munson."
"Zaza!" called an anxious voice from the breakwater, and she left him.
The bewhiskered man showed faintly through the fog. "Come along, kid,
and go to bed. You mustn't bother the man on lookout. 'Tisn't shipshape."
"Papa," said the child as he lifted her over the barrier, "was my name
ever Zenie? Did you call me Zenie when I was little?"
And Bridge, with his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth, and
somewhat unsteady on his feet, could just hear the receding voice of the
man as he answered:
"No, kid; but your aunt's name was Zenie. She died the day before you
were born. You're the dead image of her."
Bridge did not see the child again. He thought of her, of course,
marveling at the resemblance and relationship, which he ascribed to
coincidence—that now had a meaning to him—but marveling the more
at his change of heart, which he ascribed to the kindly thought and
comment of the old lady. It began as a furious disgust at his waste of
time and energy, but became a serious, practical ambition.
He finished the voyage, and for the first time since going to sea chose his
boarding house—the Sailors' Home—and here he talked with second
mates and a better class of seamen. He borrowed an Epitome of
Navigation, looked it over, and bought one in a second-hand shop, with
other books that appealed to him. He stopped drinking, and, with money
in his pocket, was able to choose his next ship, an English deep-water
craft, whose rules were such as to give him his afternoon watch below
and time for study. He furbished up his unused knowledge of arithmetic,
and in this ship found a kindly disposed first mate, who lent him an old
sextant to puzzle over and become familiar with. He reached for the
theory of seamanship as distinct from navigation, and, procuring such
textbooks as he could find in foreign ports, mastered the reasons of the
various evolutions which so far he had helped perform under orders.
When able to, he applied for and passed a second mate's examination,
and won a Board of Trade certificate. Then he bought himself a sextant.
He made two voyages in this ship, when a sick and dying second mate
left a vacancy, and this vacancy was filled by Bridge, who had attracted
the captain's attention by his intelligence and energy. An officer now, his
progress was more rapid. He reached farther, laying in for private use
magazines and standard works of the world's literature, and gave himself
that quiet self-confidence so valuable in conversation, and so difficult for
a seaman to acquire. His voice, while losing none of its power to be
heard against the wind, became softer and evenly modulated. Few could
have told, from his manner and personality that he had not gone through
the usual course of an English apprentice, with a capital of good home
influences to start with, and a protection from bad as he advanced. No
captious shipowner's wife would have said he was not a gentleman.
In seven years from the birth of his ambition, with an English master's
certificate and an American ocean license to his credit, he shipped first
mate of a large sky-sailyard American ship at New York, and at the
orders of the agent who had engaged him took her down to the
Horseshoe to await the captain, who was also the owner, he said, and
was to join her on the day of sailing. The captain came on the tug that
was to tow them to sea, and stepped aboard, brisk, bewhiskered, and
peppery, and with him was a young woman who, as Bridge was
introduced, he said was his daughter, who would make the voyage with
them.
Bridge, after seeing them below, went forward to the windlass, with his
brain reeling as it had reeled on the forecastle deck of the liner. The
captain was the breezy person who had noticed him scrubbing paint, the
daughter the child that had come to him on lookout—whom he still
imagined as a child, but now grown to womanhood, and with the same
pure, clean-cut face, the same wealth of golden hair, and dark wondering
blue eyes—the living, breathing, matured, and perfected image of the
little girl that had gone to the angels twenty years ago. He felt, as he
supervised the weighing of the anchor, as he had felt when this little girl
had come forward to sing to the school, the glorified sense of
recognition, and, added to it, the uplift of victory and achievement, the
content that comes of long search and the finding of the thing sought. He
knew this woman, knew her well, though she had not spoken a word. He
knew her now as part of himself, that he had missed, and found. And she
was here, in the same ship with him! He would see her daily!
But, as a matter of fact, he saw very little at first. He was a watch officer,
who slept part of each day; and a suspicious and peppery father, with an
eye out for good looks in an otherwise efficient and valuable first mate,
saw to it that she took her meals with him in his own after cabin, and
also that she took her daily exercise on deck when Bridge was asleep and
the ship in charge of the second mate, an unbeauteous and beauty proof
old sea dog. In the exercise of this watchful function of fatherhood, the
old man grew more and more peppery in his manner toward Bridge and
his crew, and finally took no pains to conceal an actual dislike for the
first mate, which no amount of professional care and forethought on his
part could offset.
And it was all wasted energy as far as Bridge was concerned, for a more
inoffensive and non-progressive lover never loved. Try as he might, he
could not bring himself to address her when they occasionally met,
unless she spoke to him first. She seemed to carry in her personality an
inhibition on his thought, speech, and action that prevented an overture.
And this continued until the ship had rounded the Cape of Good Hope
and sailed along the fortieth parallel to the vicinity of St. Paul, by which
time the father, having worried himself into insomnia, was compelled to
relax his vigilance by the physical necessity of sleeping as long as he
could, night or day, whenever sleep came to him, and the daughter, intent
upon matters far removed from love and lovers, unconsciously placed
herself in the way of a better acquaintance with Bridge.
She came on deck alone one night in the first watch, when the ship was
tearing along before a quarterly breeze that she could barely carry the
kites under, and from the break of the poop watched Bridge on the main
deck giving the last orders toward the setting of a main royal staysail;
then, as he mounted the poop steps, she accosted him.
"Mr. Bridge," she said, holding up her father's sextant, "will you please
point out to me the Magellan Clouds and the Coal Sacks?"
"Why, certainly," said Bridge, all his shyness vanishing. "Come around
to the lee quarter, Miss Munson. I've noticed you before with the sextant.
Studying navigation?"
"Yes, as I can. Father has tutored me, and I've got as far as meridian
observations and chronometer time; but I want to go farther, and father is
a bad teacher. He's somewhat cross, and, Mr. Bridge, do you know I
think I'm going beyond him!" She smiled a little roguishly.
"That ought to be easy," answered Bridge. "You are young, with a fresh
mind. It is hard for men to study."
"But so easy to do other things—to command ships, to fight, to shoot, to
ride horses, to swim. I'm a swimmer, though it took me years to learn. I
swam a mile once."
"You can beat me," answered Bridge simply. "I cannot swim at all."
"I am ambitious," she said, "to do what men do. My present fad is
navigation. I shall never be satisfied until I have an ocean license."
"It is a great force in you, Miss Munson," said Bridge earnestly. "It is
rare in women; but men feel it now and then. It gripped me seven years
ago, and lifted me from the forecastle to the cabin. Do you remember?"
"What?" she asked.
"The man on lookout in the Umbria, on the night you came forward,
when you thought I had called to you? Remember, it was foggy, and your
father came after you."
"Was that you?" she asked. "Oh, now I understand. Oh, Mr. Bridge! No,
I don't understand. I thought I knew you then, and I have thought since I
came aboard that I knew you, that I had met you somewhere; but father
—"
"Never mind, Miss Munson. These things are inexplicable. I thought, as
the years went on, that it was a certain, curious sort of praise of myself,
from an old lady I saw with your father that day, when I was aft
scrubbing paintwork."
"My grandmother. She died last year."
"I thought it was her good opinion of me," went on Bridge earnestly;
"but now I know it was your visit on the forecastle. Miss Munson, you
were then the exact duplicate of a little girl who died at thirteen—a little
girl that I worshipped as one of God's angels, and who went to the
angels. Her name was Zenie. I have read of reincarnation. I wonder if it
is possible that her soul returned—in you."
The girl stiffened and drew back, while her eyes opened in the old
wonder of the night on the forecastle. Bridge, looking forward, went on
gravely:
"What right have we—poor wretched human souls!—to say that we will
do this or that thing, that we will strive and succeed, when there are
forces within us past our understanding, that decide the matter for us? I
loved that little girl Zenie. She made me a plucky, ambitious boy. She
died, and I became a wreck, a tramp, a scrubwoman on a liner. I saw you,
and went to work; and here I am—as a sailor a practical success. I once
read a poem that I liked. I forget the title and the author; but one verse
ran like this:

"'The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit—'"

A heavy cane came down on his head, and an angry voice broke in,
"Damn you! Is this what I shipped a first mate for? To keep my daughter
up till near midnight, and wake me up making love to her over my
window? Zaza, go below at once!" The captain had rounded the corner
of the house in his pajamas.
The girl screamed as the cane was poised for a second blow; but Bridge
said nothing, nor did the cane descend again. The mate raised his two
arms high above his head, leaned backward over the low poop-rail,
sagged down, and slid headlong over it into the sea.
Again the girl screamed, and the captain, shouting "Man overboard!"
sprang to a life-buoy fastened to the taffrail, tore it loose, and threw it.
"My God! what have I done?" he said chokingly. "I did not mean to
knock him overboard."
No one heard this. The girl had swooned in the alley, and the man at the
wheel was snugly ensconced in a warm, sound-proof wheelhouse, with
but one window open.
"Put your wheel down!" ordered the captain through the window. "Bring
her up till she shakes. All hands forward, there! Come aft four men and
clear away this quarter-boat. Weather main-brace the rest of you!"
They did all that men may do. They hove the ship to, lowered a boat, and
searched till daylight. But Bridge, who could not swim, was not found;
and the ship went on, with a remorseful captain trying to comfort a
frantic girl, who in two days was down with brain-fever.
Zaza was a troublesome patient, and as the captain had now to stand
watch with his second mate he could give her little of the attention she
needed—he could spend with her only an hour or so from each watch
below, and, if all was well with the ship, a few minutes from the watch
on deck. In her lucid moments there was small comfort for the unhappy
man. Not a drop of medicine would she take from his hand, nor a morsel
of food, and not a word would she speak to him; but in the steady,
scornful, unforgiving look in her dark blue eyes was a world of reproach.
Yet, when the fever pressed her hard, she would talk, calling him
"father," and ask him to look so that he too could see. And, as he could
not look into the realm she was in, she must perforce explain, insisting
that he could see if only he would look. For she could see so clearly, she
said; and as her explanations were repeated again and again, broken in
upon by the awakenings to lucidity, it was some time before what she
saw took on sequence and color. Then it was a picture and a story
complete.
A long, heaving sea she saw first, and a floating life-buoy; then a man
clinging to its edge, not intelligently, as would a man who knows life-
buoys and the way to use them. This man made no attempt to place it
under his arms; he simply clung to its edge, and was frequently
immersed, as the circular ring turned in the water. This man was Mr.
Bridge, she said; but on his face was no perturbation as to his plight. He
smiled, and clung to the life-buoy as though animated by instinct alone.
There was no expression other than the smile, nothing of shock, nor
interest, nor anxiety. With the rising of the sun there came into the
picture a lateen-rigged craft filled with swarthy men, and it steered close
to the man; and they pulled him, still smiling vacantly, into the vessel.
They gave him a flagon to drink from; but he would not, till tutored.
They put food to his mouth, and after a time he ate mechanically.
The picture now embraced a high, mountainous coast, deeply indented
with fiords and bays, and the dark men of the lateen craft were landing,
taking with them the smiling man who could not eat nor drink without
help. Then she saw him wandering alone along the beach in the rain, still
smiling, and looking at the sea from which he had escaped. She saw him
again, unkempt and unshaven, still alone, still smiling; and later with his
clothing in tatters, his hair to his shoulders, his beard covering his
features, and the merciless rain beating him. But though his mouth and
chin were hidden, in his eyes was still the vacant look at the sea, and the
smile. One more picture completed the list; he was more than ever a
creature of rags and ends, and emaciated—a living, breathing skeleton,
asleep in a cave, but smiling as he slept.
It ended in time, and Captain Munson sailed his ship into Melbourne
with his daughter convalescent, but so worn out himself that he
deputized another skipper to unload her and take her up the China Sea
with a cargo of wool, while he and the girl recuperated. She was still
reserved, if not frigid, in her manner; but never alluded to the unfortunate
happening that killed her filial love for him. And little by little the color
came to her cheek, and the light to her eye, so that her father hoped that
her trouble of mind had left her.
But he hoped too much. She came to him one day and said, "Father,
when does the ship come back?"
"Ought to be here next week, Zaza. Why?"
"Have you chartered her?"
"Thought of a load of hides for New York."
"Give it up. You will admit that she belongs to me, will you not?"
"When you're of age, of course. Your grandmother left you everything."
"I was of age yesterday—twenty-one, legal age in all countries. As I own
the ship, I shall decide what to do with her."
"What do you want to do?"
"Go back to the middle of the Indian Ocean. There is a man there who
needs help."
"Daughter, Zaza, my poor girl! Your mind has left you. Don't be so
absurd. He is dead. He could not have lived. You know I'm sorry. I'll
never forgive myself. But this will do no good."
"He is not dead. He is calling me all the time. I hear it strongest as I
waken from sleep. I hear it as I have heard it all my life. He calls me the
name I called myself when little, before I knew my own name. I called
myself Zenie. I would say Zenie will do this, or that. And ever since I
can remember I have heard this voice calling to me, 'Zenie, come back!' I
heard it in the fog that night on the steamship, and I went to him. I could
not help it. He was the man on lookout, and I seemed to know him. You
came after me. Do you recall it? He told me later that he had loved a
little girl named Zenie, who died. I am that girl. I know it. I know it!"
"Great God, girl! What nonsense is this? Are you crazy?"
"I fear I may be unless this stops," she answered, pausing in her restless
pacing of the floor, and looking at him with dilated eyes. "I dreamed of
him this morning. He was on land, and it was raining. His clothing was
in tatters, he was bearded, and his hair was long and matted. He was thin
with starvation and suffering; but he called to me, so beseechingly,
'Zenie, come back!'"
"You had such ravings when you were delirious, Zaza. It is part of your
fever, nothing more."
"It is more! It is truth! He is alive, or I should not hear. Were he dead, I
should not be alive; for he called me back from the unknown to meet him
and help him. He needs me now. I am going to him!"
The father stared in silence, while the girl walked the floor.
"I expect you to waive all legal transfer of the property," she went on. "I
expect you to recognize me as owner of the ship, and to take her where I
direct. If you will not, I shall take such action as I find necessary, or
possible, and employ another captain. If I am thwarted, I shall go myself.
I am a navigator."
"Zaza, you are mad!" said the father solemnly.
"Do not say that, or I shall go mad. There are things in life past our
comprehension or analysis. This is one of them. All I know is what I feel
—that he is part of myself, or I part of him."
"You have fallen in love with him, and you think these things."
"Do not confound cause and effect."
"What land is he on? Do you pretend to know that?"
"We shall find him. Something will guide us—God, if you like."
The father regarded her fixedly for a moment; then sighed, and said, "I
suppose I may as well humor you, for a while at least. We shall take in
ballast as soon as she arrives, and go. But what a waste of time!"
So the big ship, able to earn an annual dividend of sixteen per cent. of
her cost, left Melbourne in ballast, practically in charge of a crazed girl
bent on finding a man drowned ten months before.
According to accepted standards no alienist would have hesitated in
pronouncing her crazed. She slept little, was careless of her personal
appearance, and walked the deck aimlessly, occasionally peering at the
compass, and looking at the helmsman in a way to make him steer better
for a time. She nagged her father when stress of wind compelled the
shortening of sail. She took the sun at midday with Bridge's sextant, and
took chronometer sights to work out the longitude, sharply criticizing her
father for an error of a few seconds in his calculations. She grudged the
necessity of reaching south to the forty-fifth parallel to avoid the strong
head winds on the fortieth. Night and day she was up, worrying her
distracted father and the two mates with questions, comments, and
speculations. She pored over the chart, on which was pricked off the
ship's position when Bridge had gone overboard, and pricked off herself
the daily position as the ship beat her way westward.
But it was not till the ship had arrived at the fatal spot, and her father had
prepared a series of logical deductions for her consideration, that she
showed anything of definiteness in her whims and fancies. She had
insisted that they heave the ship to that night, as she did not care to go
farther in the darkness, and had lain down to pass the night as she could
—not to sleep, she told her father, but to pray to God for light and hope
and method. And in an hour she was up.
"Father," she said as she awakened the old man in his berth, "we must
head south by west, half west. I know the course."
"What do you know?" grunted the wearied and conscience stricken man.
"Go back to bed, and let me sleep! Sleep yourself! Let me alone, or I'll
be as mad as you are!"
She got out the chart and spread it on the cabin table. Then, with her eyes
gleaming with the concentrated stare of the insane, she traced out the
drift of the ship since the last plotting, and from the point reached drew a
line south by west, half west. It struck a large, irregular island, and she
read its name, Desolation Island. She went on deck, disheveled and
careless, her hair flying in the wind, and asked the officer of the watch to
heave the log and give her the best of his judgment as to the ship's drift
through the night. Then she went back to her berth, and did not appear
until daylight, when she came up and again interviewed the officer in
charge.
"Father," she said, when the old man had turned out for breakfast, "look
at this chart." She spread it out, clear of the dishes, and drew a line from
the night time position of the ship to the point indicated by her drift, and
from this point drew a line south by west. It intercepted the other on the
coast of Desolation Island.
"Last night, father," she said, "he was calling insistently. I saw him
plainly, and he held a compass in his hands, and pointed to the lubber's
point. It was at south by west, half west. I told you that; but you refused
to believe me. I have plotted the drift during the night—eleven miles due
southwest—and here is the drift on this line. Here, too, is our position
this morning. Just before I wakened I saw a large compass, filling the
whole room, and the lubber's point was at south by west. A south by
west line from here intercepts the same spot on the coast of Desolation
Island as the other. Father, he is there! It all fits in. We must go to him."
"Well, well, we'll try," said the old man weakly. "God knows I want to
ease your mind, and until you are sure I suppose you'll think he's still
alive. It's a tough job, though, to search an island eighty miles long
where it rains continually."
Sail was made, and the wheel put up; but as the wind was light it was
nightfall before the big, light ship sailed into an estuary, with two men at
the leadlines, and anchored in the dusk, not half a mile from the beach.
The girl would have lowered a boat and gone ashore at once; but this was
beyond all reason, they told her, the two mates joining the captain in the
protest. This was not what they had signed for, they contended.
So, up and down from her berth to the deck, and back and forth from end
to end of the ship, the half demented young woman passed the night, and
at the first glimmer of daylight was beyond her limitations. The quarter
boat was proved leaky, and had been left behind. All others were
inboard, stowed upside down on the forward house. The ship's one life-
buoy had gone with Bridge.
She procured a piece of spun yarn from the booby hatch, triced her skirts
up to her waist, and, unseen by the sleepy anchor watch forward, went
down the side on a rope's end belayed to a pin. There was a brisk wind
blowing in from the open sea, and a short, crispy wave motion with
which she must contend; but she struck out bravely for the beach.
"I am coming!" she called wildly. "I am coming—coming!"
Skilled seamen and fishermen are often deceived in the look of a surf
viewed from seaward, and many a boat's crew that hopes to beach safely
is caught and half drowned in a furious turmoil that can be seen only
from the shore. This mad girl had no advantage of such experience, and
probably would not have been influenced by it had it come to her. She
swam vigorously at first, then rested awhile on her back, and went on,
swimming till tired, and floating until rested.
But, at a hundred yards from the beach, she found conditions which
precluded these spells of rest. The seas broke over her, and floating was
impossible. She was forced to expend her strength. Then the spun-yarn
belt loosened, and her skirts embarrassed her movements; it became
more and more difficult to make headway. All she could do was to keep
her head above water, while the aching pain of fatigue attacked her
limbs, and the bitter salt water flung into her mouth by the spiteful seas
choked its way down her throat, and into her lungs. Struggling weakly,
and more weakly, she sank beneath and remained until consciousness
was nearly gone; then the back wash of the undertow brought her to the
surface, and with the one breath of air she procured came another inrush
of water. Barely moving her limbs now, she went under again; and when
next she appeared she had ceased to struggle, or breathe, or think.
Once more she went under, and when she came to light the surf was
rolling her up the beach, and dragging her back—an inert, lifeless form,
with eyes wide open and staring, and a wealth of golden hair wrapped
round the pale and wasted face. A final heave of the pitiless sea threw
her face downward on a fringe of rocks at high-water mark. One large
stone caught the body at the waist line, and the head sank down beyond
it until the forehead rested on another. Thus supported, the chin sank, the
mouth opened, and the water from her lungs issued forth in a tiny stream
and went back into the sea, which, having killed her, now left her alone.
But the cold rain still pelted her.

A mile away a thing crawled out of a cave—a mindless creature in the

form of a man, a disorganized organism that looked into the morning sky
with lightless eyes and meaningless smile. Emaciated and begrimed,
with hair and beard to his shoulders, clad in what had once been shirt and
trousers, but were now a flimsy covering of rags, he presented but one
human attribute beyond his meaningless smile: the articulate voice.
He began to move, in a swift walk that soon increased to a jog trot and
then to a run. Straight as a path may go, over rocks, hills, and marshy
ground, down the declivity to the sea, went this smiling creature, pausing
at times to look into the sky and murmur, "Zenie, come back!"
There was something yellow on the beach, right in his path, and at the
same swift run he approached it. He stood silently over the quiet form of
the dead girl, looking at it with smile unchanged, but with the beginning
of expression flitting and twitching over his gaunt features. Then he
stooped and turned the body over, bringing to view the pale, damp face.
"Zenie, come back!" he breathed softly. "Zenie, come back!"
The girl's chest rose convulsively, and sank, then rose again with a
deeper inhalation, and the staring eyes closed.
The mindless thing stood erect, with a face suffused by a rush of blood,
staggered, and turned; then, in a deep, sonorous voice, declaimed:

"'Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.'"
It was the finish of the quatrain begun by Bridge, and interrupted by the
blow of the cane.
"What?" he continued, as he looked down on the faintly breathing figure
of the girl. "Miss Munson! What—what is it? Where are we? We were in
the alleyway a minute ago. What has happened? Tell me! Where's the
ship?"
The girl's eyes opened, and a faint smile came to her face.
"What is it?" he insisted, stooping down and taking her cold, wet hands.
"Miss Munson, what has happened? We're ashore, and you're all wet!
Have you been overboard? You said you could swim! Why, there's the
ship now, at anchor! They're putting off with a boat! But why? Tell me,
Miss Munson! What does it mean? I've grown a beard! Why—tell me!
What is it? Zaza, tell me!"
The cold, wet hands of the girl closed gently on his big, bony fingers.
"Not Zaza!" she whispered. "Zenie! I am Zenie! I know I am!"
 THE SLEEP WALKER
There was nothing abnormal in the character of Beverton except a
tendency, while very young, to walk in his sleep, and nothing in his
twenty-five years of life of which he was really ashamed except a deed
of his infancy, born of the above-named tendency, for which he had been
severely punished at the time. The punishment, no doubt, impressed the
incident on his mind, and he recalled it occasionally, always with a flush
of shame, while he lived his years of boyhood, youth, and early
manhood. He remembered being rudely awakened from sleep, not in a
crib where his mother had placed him, nor beside her, where he
sometimes slept, but flat on his back on the carpeted floor of a long hall,
dimly illumined by distant gas jets, the soft glow from which showed
him a woman in a night-robe looking down upon him with angry eyes,
and a purple-faced child, a little younger than himself, gasping and
choking in her arms. His cheek burned from the slap she had given him,
and his head hurt from the impact with the floor, so he joined the other
baby in protest, and the uproar brought several uniformed hall-boys and
a night clerk, who led him to the room occupied by his parents. After
punishment, and when able to understand, he learned what he had done
in his sleep—left his crib, sought the hall, buried his small fingers in the
throat of this other sleep-walking infant—whom he had never seen
before—and might possibly have murdered it had not its mother
wakened and arrived in time to interfere. He was well spanked for the
feat.
His mother believed in both punishment and prayer as factors in reform.
For a long time he received nightly spankings in bed, with injunctions to
stay where he was put until morning, and supplemented his "Now I lay
me down to sleep" with a plea to be cured of his infirmity.
The treatment was successful; the unconscious cerebration left him, but
the spankings continued until he had outgrown the conscious cruelty
common to all children, then, having ceased vivisection of insects and
angle-worms, and overcome his antagonism to the aged, the helpless,
and the infirm of his own species, he began his development into a
cheery, generous, and humane character, which, assisted by good health,
good home training, and a good education, found, at manhood, outward
expression in six feet of good looks.
These good points brought him a wife—a creature as well favored as
himself, but his very antithesis in disposition and physique. He was of
the blond type, calm, masterful, and imperturbable in temperament; she
of the brunette, warm-hearted, and impulsive, yielding him neither
obedience nor spoken approval, and meeting him half-way only upon the
common ground of love, which Mother Nature provides for the
agreement of her opposites.
Beverton was content with her, and managed her in a way peculiar to
himself. Whether it was the best way or not, is hard to decide; for it is
possible that with more antagonism from him there would have been less
from her. But it was successful. As instance—she had thrown a plate of
newly buttered griddle-cakes across the breakfast table; her aim being
good, they had struck him fairly in the face, and the melted butter
smeared not only his face and shirt-front, but a gorgeous puff cravat
which her own fingers had made for him. He smilingly left the table,
changed his raiment, and they finished breakfast in silence; then, instead
of going to business, he cleared the kitchen table and began cleaning the
neckwear. A full hour he spent at the task, much in her way and to the
neglect of his business, when she broke her moody silence with:
"What are you doing? Why do you not go down town?"
"I will soon, my dear," he answered amiably. "Just as soon as I get the
syrup and butter out of this tie you made. I don't mind washing my face
twice instead of once, but I hate to see this tie soiled."
She was upon him instantly, her arms about his neck and tears in her
eyes, while she begged, brokenly, for forgiveness. It was granted, of
course, and for a long time griddle-cakes were omitted from their
discussions.
Again, inspired by a natural and wifely desire to "jog some spirit into
him," she had carefully prepared a slippery place on the front yard walk
which a slight snow concealed from his view when he arrived in the
evening. He came down hard, and though he was not hurt, he pretended
to be; for he saw through her trick at once, and to punish her howled for
assistance and blamed his own carelessness, but uttered no word of
suspicion or reproach. Neighbors assisted him in, and all that evening,
prone upon the couch, he enjoyed the ministrations of a contrite and
tearful wife, who tried to atone for her sins of commission (and
omission, for she did not confess) by softly spoken sympathy and
frequent service of watered brandy to relieve the pain—a remedy which
Beverton liked, but which was denied him as a beverage.
And so, as their young married life went on, he shamed and tamed her,
not by breaking her spirit, but by compelling her to break it herself; and
though she remained a tigress against those she imagined his enemies—
for the man had none—she displayed toward him an attitude of
meekness, adoration, and almost slavish obedience which made him at
times regret the transformation; for her tantrums were the charm which
had first attracted him.
But at this period it seemed to him that the tantrums had struck in. They
slept in separate rooms, and one night he awoke to find her leaning over
him with a pail of water poised above his head. Before he could catch the
tilting pail, she had deluged him, but even this did not disturb his
equanimity; he merely sprang out of bed, caught her by the arm, and
asked what he had done to deserve a ducking. She answered with a
scream, and, dropping the pail, clung to him in the darkness. She did not
know where she was—she could not explain, but at last he understood.
"Do you walk in your sleep, Grace?" he asked, gently.
"Oh, no—yes," she stammered; "but not since our marriage. I thought it
had left me. Oh, I'm so sorry. Did I waken you?"
"With a bucket of water," he answered, dryly as was possible in his moist
condition. "I had the habit when very young, but they cured me by
radical treatment. You're too old to be punished, Grace, but we must find
some way. You may set fire to me next time."
But he knew of no way, and when she had repeated the feat with the pail
of water, and a little later made a midnight assault upon him with the
carving-knife, he could only nail her bedroom window partly open for
ventilation, and put a bolt on his side of her door. Her grief and horror
were pathetic, and it sorely tried Beverton to lock up his wife like a wild
beast; but she had become a menace to his health, and perhaps his life;
for, though on each occasion he had wakened in time to realize her
intent, he had not wakened in time to save himself completely. He had
not quite avoided the downcoming knife; aimed at his heart, it had
grazed his arm as he wrenched from under.
It was a very fine piece of polished hardware, this knife—and belonged
to a carving-set given to them at their wedding. On the day following her
demonstration with it, and before he had announced her sentence of
nightly imprisonment, she had bound the knife, fork, and steel together
with a rosette of ribbons, and with the aid of a step-ladder hung them
high on the dining-room wall; then she burned the ladder, and when
Beverton arrived in the evening showed him the exhibit.
"There," she said, with a determined little frown, "is the only deadly
weapon in the house, and it is out of my reach. Let it stay there; I hate
the sight of it, and could never bear to have it on the table again; but if it
be up there—out of the way—where I can't help seeing it, perhaps—
perhaps—it will—" The rest was convulsive sobbing.
Beverton comforted her, and meaning to lock her up at bedtime,
suggested putting the harrowing reminder out of sight in some safe
place; but she would not consent, even though she approved of the bolt
on her door.
"I might find that knife in my sleep, no matter where you hid it," she
said. "Lock me up, instead, and then, if I pick the lock, I cannot reach the
knife."
So there it remained, and as they used their dining-room for a sitting-
room and as she had resolutely placed the beribboned and glittering
display squarely opposite her favorite seat, she had full opportunity of
benefiting by any deterrent influence it possessed. As to its possessing
such an influence, she could only surmise and hope; however, she
confessed that it fascinated her.
"I can't keep my eyes off it," she explained one evening, while they sat
reading in the dining-room. "For the dozenth time to-night I've found my
gaze creep up to that knife. Why is it? And the hateful thing makes me
sleepy—just looking at it."
"Well," responded Beverton, grimly, "if it could only keep you asleep, it
would be all right, wouldn't it?" Then, observing that the speech had
pained her, he arose, kissed the flushed cheek, and added gently, "Don't
look at it, girl; face the other way and get interested in your book. What
are you reading?"
"It's so hard to get interested," she said, wearily, "in what you don't
understand. It's a sea novel." She held up the book and turned the leaves.
"What does topgallant clewlines mean, Tom?—fore-and-aft, clew-up and
clew-down? And here's a word, 'mizzen.' And clew-garnet—what does
that mean? It's a strange language."
"Blest if I know. Pick the story out. Never mind the descriptions."
They resumed their reading, and it was ten minutes later when Beverton,
aroused by the unusual quiet, looked again at his wife. The book lay on
her lap, held open by her hands, but she was not reading—she was
staring up at the hardware glistening in the lamplight, with eyes that
were wide-open, but almost as lightless as the eyes of a corpse. And as
Beverton looked at them, the eyelids fluttered together and closed in
sleep. Beverton watched, and in a moment they opened, with an
expression in them that he had never seen before—so strange, hard, and
murderous it seemed.
"Grace," said the startled man, rising to his feet, "are you awake?"
"Awake," she screamed—"screech" better describes the hard, raspy tone
with which she answered him. "Aye, awake and ready—for eighteen
hours, come eight bells; and all guns o' the port battery down the mizzen
hatch, and all hands drunk but the cook. What's to do?"
"Wake up, Grace," he commanded.
A convulsive shiver passed through her, she uttered a little gasp, then
closed her eyes, and opened them with her natural smile.
"Why, I did go to sleep, after all, didn't I?" she asked, softly.
"Yes, and talked and looked like the very deuce. Let's see what you are
reading." He took the book from her hands, but neither on the open page
nor upon any preceding could he find words similar to those she had
spoken.
"What were you dreaming of when I spoke to you?" he inquired.
"I didn't dream—at least, I don't remember. Did you speak?" She yawned
and arose. "I'll go to bed, Tom," she said. "Lock me up."
Beverton read the book, after she had retired, from the beginning to the
opened page; then sat down and pondered far into the night.
Next evening, on his way home, he visited a physician—a personal
friend, who had once met Mrs. Beverton—and to him he stated the
trouble.
"Self-hypnotized," said the doctor, "by the usual method—staring at a
bright object. Practically in the same condition as when sleep-walking.
You can cure her by suggestion."
"How—what do you mean?"
"Don't you know that a somnambulist will always obey orders—will
believe anything that is spoken in a firm, commanding tone, the same as
though hypnotized?"
"She didn't look and act like it. And where did she get that sailor talk? It
wasn't in the book she was reading."
"The book suggested the train of thought, nevertheless. The
subconscious memory is absolute. She read those words at some time in
her life, or heard them spoken—possibly in infancy."
"Well, it's too much for me. Can you take charge of her case?"
"No—although there is not, perhaps, a man in town more studied in this
subject than myself. But there is no one more unfit to operate. I am too
subjective, as the phrase is—too good a subject, easily hypnotized, and
thus unable to control even a self-hypnotized person. As there is not a
professional hypnotist in town it devolves upon you."
"But I know nothing about it."
"Learn. Your natural mastery over her renders you the one above all
others to treat her successfully. Let her stare at the knife again—or any
bright object. Lead back into her past, and try to find what was on her
mind when she first walked in her sleep; then tell her that her fears or
anxiety were groundless, and that she must never get up in her sleep
again."
He gave Beverton as much of practical instruction as was safe for a
novice to possess, and with some misgivings the half-credulous young
husband resolved to experiment alone. But in his first attempt to do so,
he found unexpected developments in the situation that seemed to
remove the solution farther yet from his powers.
Not daring to take her into his confidence, he waited, evening after
evening, for her to place herself under favoring conditions—to take up
the wearying tale of the sea, and to rest her eyes and brain by staring at
the glistening array of steel on the wall. She capriciously and vivaciously
declared that she would have nothing more to do with either, that she
would divert her mind by polishing up her neglected accomplishment of
stenography (from practice of which he had rescued her by marriage),
and while he fidgeted and made occasional more or less adroit references
to the story, which he pretended to admire, she translated into
hieroglyphics the random thoughts of her brain.
"For if I make a widow of myself some night," she said, "and an angel of
you, Tommie, and escape execution, I will need to earn my living, don't
you see? But if you like that horrid story, suppose you read to me from
where I left off, and I'll take it down for practice."
He had committed himself, and was bound to the task. He began at the
top of the page and read, but she mercifully stopped him part way to the
bottom, so that she might transcribe her notes and verify. This measured
her interest in the story, and as he had none himself he gladly ceased, and
she began her transcription. While waiting for her he glanced at the
ornament on the wall. It was bright, pleasing to the eye—artistic in finish
and design. It attracted his gaze, and having secured it, held it; for the
longer he looked the less inclined he felt to look elsewhere, and at last,
with the knife filling his vision to the exclusion of the fork and steel, his
eyelids drooped and his senses left him.
When he wakened he was on his knees, with hands clasped in
supplication before his wife, who, with tears in her eyes, but with
laughter quivering on her lips—in fact, nearly hysterical, had arisen from
her chair with her pencil and notebook.
"Why, Tom," she said, "what is the matter with you? You were not
yourself; it was so absurd and ridiculous. Did you go to sleep, and do
you talk in your sleep, as I walk in mine?"
"No," he answered, rising and blinking sheepishly. "Did I? Yes, perhaps I
did doze off—in the chair. Did I get up?"
"Yes, and got down—on your knees to me, with your eyes impassionedly
fixed on mine—oh, it was so funny, but it frightened me; you were so
intense—and you delivered yourself of—well, I took it down in
shorthand, and I'll transcribe it first, and then read."
He sat down in his chair, and she worked busily for a few moments, and
then said: "Now, I'll read first what I took down from that horrid sea-
story, and you take the book and follow me to see if I've made mistakes."
He picked up the book from the floor, found the page, and scanned it
while she read from her copy as follows:
"'—which had blown, at times, with a force that nearly amounted to a
little gale, was lulling and becoming uncertain, as though awed by the
more violent power that was gathering along the borders of the sea, in
the direction of the neighboring continent. Each moment the eastern
puffs of air lost their strength and became more and more feeble, until, in
an incredibly short period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against
the masts—a frightful and ominous calm succeeding.'
"Now," she said, "did I make any mistakes in this?"
"No," he answered, "word for word it is correct."
"Very well. You know I stopped you at this point, and when I had written
it out in longhand, I said 'I'm ready. Go on,' and turned to a new page; but
you, instead of reading more, dropped the book, got down on your knees,
and—just listen—you uttered this in tones of the utmost distress:
"'Sir, my life is in your hands; but as to my body, in relation to that which
you would persuade me to, my soul shall sooner be separated from it,
through the violence of your arms, than I shall condescend to your
request.'"
"And I said that in my sleep?" inquired the amazed Beverton.
"You did," laughed his wife, "in the most plaintive, piping feminine
accents imaginable. You were a perfect picture of virtue in distress. What
were you dreaming of?"
"I don't remember. Isn't this the page"—he glanced at the book—"that
you were reading when you fell asleep the other evening?"
"Yes, I think so; but I was looking at the knife when I dropped off."
"So was I," he responded. "Now, this is one of Cooper's tales, written, I
think, about the middle of this century; and, though it is full of nautical
language, there is nothing in it, up to this page, that resembles this
prayerful speech of mine, or your reprehensible language the other
evening, which you uttered, by the way, in hoarse, masculine tones."
"Did I?" she asked. "What did I say?"
"Something about 'eight bells,' and 'all hands drunk.' I've forgotten it all;
but did you ever listen to any sailor yarns? Have you ever read any sea-
stories besides this?"
"I never saw a sailor in my life, that I know of. I never read a sea-story,
either, and never shall. I don't like them."
"Then it isn't the book, Grace, that affects us; it must be the knife. It is
merely a bright object which, if looked at steadily, will put a person into
a hypnotic sleep. At least, that is what I have heard."
"And then we talk," she said. "But why should you talk like a virtuous
maiden and I like a bad man?"
"I don't know," he said. "I know very little of hypnotism."
"Thomas Beverton," she said, with mock severity, "did you ever listen to
a prayer from a helpless female in your power?"
"No," he answered, laughing. "No, I swear it. I've always done the
praying myself."
"I suppose so," she rejoined, with a pout. Then, rising, she added: "If you
are going to talk in your sleep, I'm going to listen, and I'll know all about
your love affairs, remember that."
And with this truly feminine disposition of the question, she went to bed.
Beverton secured a broom from the kitchen and, reaching up, unhooked
the carving-set and examined each piece carefully. The fork was a fork,
the steel a steel, the knife a knife—simple in design and workmanship—
such as could be found in any hardware store; but the knife possessed
one slight peculiarity that his questioning eye noticed. Though it was
ground in the conventional bowie-knife shape, yet the blade as a whole
had more curve than is usual in carving-knives, while the long concave
in the back of the blade, near the point, was very short and deep. A
further exaggeration of these peculiarities would have given the blade the
look of a Moorish scimitar; but, even so, would have carried no occult
significance to Beverton's mind, and as it certainly did possess an
unpleasant and material connection with the problem before him, he
decided to remove it. Putting on his hat and overcoat, he took the three
pieces out to the back yard and hurled them, one by one, over the fence
into a deep snow-drift. Then he returned and, as was his custom, read
until sleepy.
It was two hours later before the desired condition arrived, and laying
down his book, he discovered that he had not bolted his untrusty wife in
her room. He arose and looked in, only to see that her bed was empty. He
called, but she did not answer, and, thoroughly awake now, he ran
through the rooms of the house, but did not find her. As he reached the
dining-room, however, to don his hat and coat, he saw her enter from the
kitchen. She was in her nightdress, which was wet with clinging snow; in
her eyes was the lightless stare of somnambulism, and in her hand the
knife. In spite of his temperament, Beverton shivered as he watched her
expressionless stare, then remembering his friend's instructions, pulled
himself together, and said:
"Drop that knife. Drop it at once."
The knife clattered on the floor; he advanced, picked it up, and placed it
on the sideboard. Then he faced her, calm and determined, resolved to
solve the problem.
"Why do you walk in your sleep?" he demanded. She stood quiescent
before him; and though her features moved with inward emotion, she did
not reply.
"Why do you walk in your sleep?" he again demanded. "Answer me."
"To save myself," she said, slowly, and in plaintive, aggrieved tones.
"From whom?" asked Beverton.
"From my enemy—who would kill me."
"Who is your enemy? Why would he kill you?"
"I do not know. I know I must kill him, or he will kill me."
"This is nonsense," said Beverton, sternly, warming to the problem.
"Nonsense?" Her face seemed troubled, as though the mind behind was
in doubt.
"Rank nonsense. No one would harm you. Everyone loves you. What
makes you think he would kill you?"
"He tried." The set face of the young wife took on an expression of fright
and horror. "He met me when I was looking for him, trying to explain.
He clutched me by the throat. He would have killed me if he could. He
will kill me yet if I cannot explain."
"When did he choke you?" asked Beverton. "Where was it?" he asked,
with perspiration starting from his forehead and an incident of his
childhood in his mind.
"In the hall—the long hall."
"He was a baby," ventured Beverton. "How could he harm you?"
She waited a moment, as though the question puzzled her, then said:
"A baby, yes. I was a baby, too."
"Where was this long hall?"
Again the play of emotion on her features, but no answer.
"Was it in a hotel?"
"A hotel, yes."
"What hotel? Where was it?"
"The Mansion House, Main Street, Buffalo."
Beverton shook in the knees. She had named the hotel where his parents
had stopped while traveling—where he had last walked in his sleep.
"Grace," he said, as firmly and gently as he could with his tongue
trembling against the roof of his mouth. "He did not mean to hurt you; he
did not know you at the time. He will never hurt you. You must never
seek him again, either to kill or explain to him. He is satisfied."
"Has he forgiven? Does he realize that—that—I—that—"
Her face became troubled again, and she reached forth her hands,
clutching at the air, as though trying to grasp the elusive memory.
"Yes, he has forgiven," said Beverton, steadier of voice now at the
apparent success of the experiment. "And you will never seek him again,
will you? It is all settled now."
"All settled," she repeated, while her countenance softened.
"You will not worry any more, will you?"
"No more. It is all settled. He has forgiven me."
"You will never walk in your sleep again, will you, Grace?"
"No, it is all settled. He has forgiven me."
Had Beverton sent her to bed now he might have spared himself a life-
long puzzle which ever baffled solution; but, with fairly good command
of himself, he yielded to curiosity, and asked:
"What had you done to him? What had he to forgive?"
Her face became convulsed; the query seemed a blow that gave her
agony. With arms extended and fingers clutching again, she tottered, but
did not fall; and he mercilessly repeated the question. She did not
answer, and he, blindly desirous of prompting her, reached for the knife
on the sideboard.
"Had it anything to do with this?" he asked.
"The scimitar," she exclaimed, hoarsely. "I killed her with it." Then she
pressed her hands to her brow, held them tightly, and her eyes closed,
while her frame stiffened visibly under the pressure. When she removed
her hands and looked at him, she seemed another person; for in her eyes
was the strange, hard expression they had worn when she had dozed off
in her chair. They lighted on the carving-knife, and before he could move
she pounced upon him and wrenched it from his hand.
"Ha," she exclaimed, in the same harsh, raspy voice as before; "and
would the señorita harm herself—or me? 'Tis a pretty plaything"—she
ran her finger along the edge—"but too sharp for the Lady Isobel.
Moorish make, I trow—we took it from the Spanish plate-ship off
Tortuga—but better fit to slay than to prod. And had ye thought, my
obstinate charmer, that when my patience is given out, it may be this that
shall slit your smooth white throat?" With a meaning and somewhat
quizzical smile at him, she laid the knife on the sideboard.
Beverton kept his nerve, remembering her recent amenability to his
suggestions.
"Who are you?" he asked, tentatively, seeking an opening for further
inquiry.
"Ha-ha," she laughed. "An idle question to ask of Hal Morgan. Are ye so
little informed of a man known to your countrymen from Madrid to
Panama?"
"And where are you?"
"Where am I? Where indeed, but in the stateroom of my Lady Isobel,
who, if I mistake not, is still intractable. We will try the water-cure, for
once more." She lifted her face to the ceiling and called: "On deck there.
A bucket o' water. Send it below by the steward."
As though the order were obeyed, she stepped to the kitchen-door, just
beyond which was the sink; and from this she lifted at arm's length—a
feat of strength impossible to her when awake—the pail of water which
always stood there. Turning toward him she swung it backward, one
hand supporting it, the other gripping the bottom edge, and would have
deluged him had he not spoken. "Wait," he said, sternly. "The water-cure
will not avail."
Her eyes wavered before his steady gaze, and she slowly lowered the
pail to the floor. For a moment it seemed that she would waken, or at
least lapse into softer mood; for her features grew composed, and her
eyes lost their glitter; but they rested on the knife, and immediately
hardened.
"Then, here's to the end o' it," she said, impatiently, and springing
forward she seized it, then with another bound sidewise, she reached
Beverton and plunged the knife in his shoulder.
It was done so swiftly that he had not time to dodge, and he sank, weak
and nerveless under the blow, the knife slipping from her hand and
remaining in the wound. Looking up with failing eyes, he beheld her
standing with arms listless by her side, the tension gone from her face,
and her gaze wandering mildly about the room.
"Grace," he gasped, "you've killed me. Wake up!"
The last was a whisper, but she heard it; and Beverton's last
remembrance before he fainted was of her piercing scream as she
wakened and looked down upon him.

She had not killed him; on the contrary, though he bled copiously until
their aroused servant had summoned the doctor, he recovered from the
wound and loss of blood long before his wife recovered from the brain-
fever that followed her awakening; and it was while she was delirious,
and he convalescent enough to talk that the doctor, after listening for an
hour to her raving one day, entered the room of the other patient, and
said:
"She is past the crisis—perspiring and sound asleep, and will recover
rapidly. But, Beverton, though while delirious she was most certainly in
as subjective a condition as when self-hypnotized, yet she has not uttered
one word of a nautical or piratical nature."
"And what of that?" replied Beverton weakly, but doggedly. "According
to those books of yours"—he pointed to a pile of them at the foot of his
bed—"and I've studied them well while lying here—there are one, two,
or more sub-normal personalities within us, any one of which can
become dominant."
"Admitted; but is that a proof of reincarnation?—that the soul of your
wife once lived in the body of a pirate named Hal Morgan, and that your
soul animated the form of a beauteous maiden captured by him?"
"I can accept no other explanation. As infants we were subconscious
enemies. I drove her back farther, seeking the cause; I saw the
convulsive transition. I heard her use language she could not have
learned in this life."
The doctor smiled, and drawing a book from his pocket, said: "Then here
is something to further strengthen your belief—for a time. I took the
copy of your maidenly speech to a librarian in the city, told him what
was necessary to interest him, and he found this book for me. It is Pyle's
compilation of the lives of the buccaneers, and in Esquemeling's account
of the doings of Captain Henry Morgan is this—" He opened the book,
searched the pages, and read:
"'—but the lady, not willing to consent, or accept his presents, showing
herself like Susannah for constancy, he presently changed his note, and
addressed her in another tone, threatening a thousand cruelties and hard
usages. To all of which she gave only this resolute and positive answer
—'
"Listen now," said the doctor. "'Sir, my life is in your hands; but as to my
body, in relation to that which you would persuade me to, my soul shall
sooner be separated from it, through the violence of your arms, than I
shall condescend to your request.'"
"And what more do you want?" asked Beverton, excitedly. "The very
words I spoke; and I never saw that book."
"Wait," said the doctor, smiling. "This follows:
"'Captain Morgan, understanding this her heroic resolution, commanded
her to be stripped of the best of her apparel, and imprisoned in a
darksome, stinking cellar; here she was allowed a small quantity of meat
and drink, wherewith she had much ado to sustain life.'
"No need of reading the whole account," said the doctor, closing the
book. "This occurred in the city of Panama, which Morgan had just
captured, and the lady was never at sea with him. His men took her from